What’s keeping in the kitchen?

We hardly ever eat out. We love to eat — and cook — and we make our own dinners almost every night (we went out twice in the past month — one anniversary and one reunion dinner with family). We don’t order out. We don’t bring home take-out. So where does the money go? I wonder……not worry……just wonder.

1. Buy food in bulk. Packaged foods and carryout containers are a major source of nonrecyclable plastic waste. Think about those chip bags, K-Cups, energy bar wrappers, almond milk in Tetra Pak cartons, cereal bags and cracker trays. Each of these packages is made of mixed plastics that must be disposed of in a landfill.

Then I heard that needle across the record noise.

You see my problem? We don’t eat chips (just don’t care for them). We don’t use K-Cups (it makes us anxious that we have any waste from our coffee making — even compostable filters and grounds). No tetra paks except for some stock now and again. We actually make our own cereal mixes. Few crackers. We’re exterior-walls-of-the-super-market shoppers. PLUS! No room for bringing home and storing huge packs of ANYTHING! Costco is not on our list of favourite stores. We just can’t stock up for the zombie apocalypse.

Buy only what you need. This is a pretty obvious one, but try to buy the food and the quantities you know you’ll consume from one shopping trip to another. It’s okay to have an empty fridge before you go shopping. If feasible in your area, make more frequent, smaller shopping trips.

That’s a bit more like it. We live up the hill from a Superstore. DH likes to take a nice walk every day. It’s a match (of purposes) made in heaven. Following the rest of the rules, we compost — Vancouver has a great composting program. We don’t hoard food until it’s spoiled — our tiny fridge and freezer means we’re faced with our leftovers whenever we dip in for a cold one or an ice cube. We use up our leftovers. What to do to reduce our food bill?

**sigh**

One place I would really like to reduce our waste is with food storage. I rely on plastic wrap. I use it to keep my lunch from drying out, I wrap my cut onions in it, and put over dishes of leftovers.

I used to use lots of plastic wrap too but now I almost never use, could actually live without. My concern was both that it was wasteful and I did not want plastic on my food. My solution: I bought some glass containers of various sizes and use those instead if plastic wrap. Costco (know it is not your favorite) has good deals on sets of glass containers.

I too shop mostly exterior walls of store but I find Costco very helpful for items I do use and you often cannot beat their prices or quality. If the quantity is too much and I cannot store it, I share a box/cartoon with my folks. For example, we love the fresh mangos out right now. We take turns buying and split the box.

Check out Abeego products. They’re usually at the big local craft fairs. They make reusable food wrap products from natural materials including beeswax, so the wraps stick to themselves and whatever they’re covering, breathe well, and preserve the food. A couple of my friends bought a set and are very happy with them.http://abeego.com/